At least 32 children between one and four years of age drown everyday in Bangladesh — deaths that can be avoided with simple steps that families can take.
“It is the leading cause of deaths accounting for 43 percent of all deaths in this age group,” said Dr Shams El Arifeen, director of ICDDR,B’s Centre for Child and Adolescent Health.
He told bdnews24.com 50 to 60 percent of the deaths are of babies between one and two years of age when they have started to crawl and then walk.
“They can drown even in a few inches of water,” he said. “There are scores of examples that a child died in a bucket of water”.
But it remained ‘unnoticed’.
Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charity of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has come forward to prevent such deaths.
The foundation on Friday said it is donating $10 million, nearly Tk 77.50 crore, to the World Health Organization and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for helping working mothers with solutions.
Dr Arifeen said the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit (JH-IIRU), in collaboration with the Center for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB) andthe ICDDR,B has taken an initiative to prevent such drowning.
He said they would generate “strong evidence” of its prevention at the community level.
It is the first such initiative in Bangladesh ‘specifically’ targeting the under-4 kids.
“It’s a problem (babies drowning) that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, especially because simple steps can save so many lives,” said Dr. Kelly Henning, who leads public health programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies.
“In Bangladesh, we will work to improve supervision of children while adults are working and to provide equipment that can keep children out of harm’s way”.
The ICDDR,B director Arifeen said they would set up community daycare and playpens for mothers.
Children between the ages of 9 – 36 months who are usual residents of the selected sub-districts will be the direct beneficiaries of this project.
“The goal is to reach 80,000 children over a two-year period,” he said.
Under the project, the daycare centres will be set up at community level in a spacious room which will be equipped with charts, toys and other amenities that stimulate social and cognitive development of children.
A mother would be trained up to look after maximum 30 children in a day care six days a week between 9am and 1pm, a crucial time when most of the drowning occurs as mothers remain busy with household chores or outside work, not supervising the little ones already starting to crawl or walk.
Unicef says most of them are from poor families who live close to water bodies.
At least 3,200 day care centres would be set up under the new project where the supervisor mother will look after safety, development, hygiene, nutrition and other health issues of the children.
Playpens will be given to mothers so that they can keep them at an outside place at home when they work.
The baby will be able to play inside a playpen which will have bars round the side and open at the top.
“It is very useful particularly when mothers are busy with household chores,” the ICDDR,B director said. “It’s to empower mother so that whenever she feels she can use this”.
Fencing at the point of water bodies where the child is likely to drop into water can also reduce the risk, Unicef says.
Source: bdnews24
